Abstract
Online privacy has become immensely important with the growth of technology and the expansion of communication. Social Media Networks have risen to the forefront of current communication trends. With the current trends in social media, the question now becomes how can we actively protect ourselves on these platforms? Users of social media networks share billions of images a day. Whether intentional or unintentional, users tend to share private information within these images. In this study, we investigate (1) the users’ perspective of privacy, (2) pervasiveness of privacy leaks on Twitter, and (3) the threats and dangers on these platforms. In this study, we incorporate techniques such as text analysis, analysis of variance, and crowdsourcing to process the data received from these sources. Based on the results, the participants’ definitions of privacy showed overlap regardless of age or gender identity. After looking at the survey results, most female participants displayed a heightened fear of dangers on social media networks because of threats in the following areas: assets and identity. When the participants were asked to rank the threats on social media, they showed a high concern for burglary and kidnapping. We find that participants need more education about the threats of visual content and how these privacy leaks can lead to physical, mental, and emotional danger.
Highlights
Social Media Networks, Privacy, and TechnologyIncrease in technology use has expanded the fronts that privacy advocates must fight
We explore the state of privacy on social media networks with an emphasis on visual privacy leaks and the future of privacy for its’ users
We look at the participants use of social media networks, definitions of privacy, and observations of privacy leaks on social media networks
Summary
Increase in technology use has expanded the fronts that privacy advocates must fight. Ninety percent of Facebook profiles contain at least one image, 87.8% of users share their birth date, phone numbers are listed on 39.9% of the profiles (including 28.8% that contain cell phone numbers), and 50.8% of users share current residency [1] Revealing information such as birthdate, hometown, current residence, and phone number can be used to estimate the user’s social security number and exposes them to potential financial and identity threats [1]. Attackers can extract textual information, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, place of residence, phone numbers and other information [1,4] This content can create an opportunity for “cyberbullying” of other users [3]. This work provided an understanding of the most threatening dangers to users as well as a hierarchy of dangers in correlation to the rankings of the participants
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